posted at 10:41 pm on May 28, 2014 by Allahpundit

For many on the left, Clinton is the woman who supported the Iraq War, ran to the right of President Obama and is associated with the Wall Street-friendly centrism espoused by her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

Progressives feel they are in a political golden age in which questions about income inequality are growing louder, anti-gay marriage laws are falling and the growing Hispanic electorate regards the GOP with skepticism. Given all that, they don’t want to be stuck with a standard-bearer they see as too centrist…

“Every candidate who thinks about running will be faced with a whole set of questions, on holding Wall Street accountable, on combatting student debt, on expanding social security,” said Ilya Sheyman, the executive director of MoveOn.Org Political Action. “Whether it’s Secretary Clinton or Sen. Warren or others, all of them are going to have to address the issues that progressives really care about.”

But for Mrs. Clinton, a rich, successful woman and part of one of America’s most powerful political families, there are questions about how effectively she can carry that banner if she runs for president in 2016…

“If Hillary Clinton campaigns on reforming Wall Street, jailing Wall Street bankers who broke the law, expanding Social Security benefits and investing in government jobs — and fights those fights in a way that shows her heart is in it — voters will reward her,” [Adam Green, co-founder of the increasingly powerful Progressive Change Campaign Committee] said. “If it sounds like lip service, a more genuine-sounding populist, Democrat or Republican, may capture the imagination of voters.”

And it just so happens that many of those Democrats were the very same ones who in 2007 were among the first to breach conventional wisdom and line up behind up the little-known Illinois senator…

Political observers have various theories about what is at play here. Although no one contacted for this article would admit to being pressured to get on board early after last cycle’s betrayal, in HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton, the authors, Washington-based correspondents Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, revealed that the Clintons kept an “enemies list” of who had not been loyal during the campaign. Clinton loyalists downplayed the significance of the document, but it has been hard to not notice that over the last six years Bill Clinton especially has vigorously campaigned on behalf of those who supported Hillary.

“They certainly know that the Clintons take note and keep score,” said Larry Sabato, a political historian at the University of Virginia. “This is not a couple that easily forgives and forgets. So this is kiss-and-make-up time for most of these people.”

But there’s also a smaller but increasingly vocal group making its presence felt lately — call it the “Wary of Hillary” Democrats. They’re not outwardly opposing a Clinton candidacy. But they are anxious about the spectacle of a Clinton juggernaut, after seeing what happened when she ran a campaign of inevitability last time…

“She is an enormously capable candidate and leader, but I do worry about the inevitability, because I think it’s off-putting to the average voter,” Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, a longtime Obama ally, told CNN earlier this month. “And I think that was an element of her campaign the last time. As an enthusiastic Democrat, I just hope that the people around her pay attention to that this time around.”

***

Burned by disappointment, many liberals want to vote with their heads, not their hearts, this time around.

And the Hillary-Industrial Complex is ready to exploit that sentiment. The HIC is the vast network of loyalists, retreads, activists, pols, hacks, fans (in and out of the press), Friends of Bill, and, of course, Friends of Hillary who want to see a Clinton restoration. They are waiting for her to run like 19th-century land speculators anticipating news that the railroad will go past their lots…

In her first campaign-style speech on the economy last week at the New America Foundation, Clinton mentioned Obama exactly once. (He’s worked hard, she said.) She referenced her husband a half-dozen times and talked at great length about how we need to return to the policies of the 1990s. (The Clintons remain convinced that the 1990s boom was a function of Bill’s expert tweaking of the dials and knobs on the master control board of the economy.) It wasn’t even subtle. No mention of the stimulus, cash-for-clunkers, Obamacare, or Dodd-Frank. As economics writer James Pethokoukis noted, “It was like Hillary was placed in suspended animation in 2008 and just recently revived to give a stump speech about the evils of the Bush tax cuts.”

Not only was there precious little talk of Obama, there was precious little talk of her four years on Obama’s once-vaunted “team of rivals.” She listed none of her major accomplishments as secretary of state, probably because she had none. (She did open with a reference to some bureaucratic reshuffling on her watch.) No serious student of foreign policy thinks our strategic standing in the world improved on Clinton’s watch as America’s chief diplomat. That alone doesn’t mean she was a terrible secretary of state — lots of people in that job tread water. But it doesn’t inspire either. Meanwhile, the most famous thing she did in that job was nothing — on the night of the Benghazi attack. She also traveled a lot, which is nice.

They see an opportunity to wrest control of a narrative that some allies fear could be damaging to Clinton if she moves ahead with a 2016 presidential campaign…

Some of the expected attendees of the briefing have been communicating over the past few weeks in calls and through an email listserv, with the goal of keeping the broad-based group informed about the news accounts of the committee’s anticipated activities.

A wide range of people are on the listserv, including people who work for groups like Media Matters, former Hillary Clinton foreign policy adviser Andrew Shapiro, former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor and several current and former Hillary Clinton aides.

On many occasions, Republicans have touted Bill Clinton’s administration as a way to bash Obama. They maintain the 42nd president negotiated in good faith, and Obama doesn’t…

“If Hillary Clinton does indeed run in 2016, one of the most powerful weapons she will have in her campaign arsenal is ‘Republicans, in their own words.’ It’s a treasure trove of sound-bites and footage that could leave Republicans kicking themselves when it is all said and done.”…

O’Connell said, “Need to distance yourself from the albatross known as Obama? Roll the tape. Want to tout your bipartisan credentials to woo independents? Roll the tape. Have to show that you’re a pragmatic problem solver? Roll the tape.”

***

Rove, however, was on to something. He exposed a Clinton weakness that has nothing to do with her brain and everything to do with her skin. It is too thin. She despises the media and trusts us not at all. This is a theme of the Auletta piece and a similar one by Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman of Politico. One veteran of Clinton’s campaigns put it this way to them: “Look, she hates you. Period. That’s never going to change.”

I suppose she’s entitled. The press has investigated her, pummeled her, poked into her personal life, questioned her sexual orientation, accused her of adultery, said she had thrown a White House lamp at her husband (I wonder why?) and is responsible in some fuzzy way for the four deaths at Benghazi. Presumably, her link to the VA scandal has yet to be uncovered…

What gave Rove’s speculation legs was Clinton’s penchant to roll into a defensive ball and act as if she’s hiding something. Had she a reputation for openness and candor, no one could possibly think she has suffered a grievous head injury. It was this allergic reaction to the press that hurt her so much when she lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama. If she runs in 2016, it will hurt her if she does not get over it.

Webb, for one. He has been both a Democrat and Republican. Maybe Brian Schweitzer, the former Montana governor who mixes liberal and conservative positions and is not a fan of the Washington, D.C., establishment. A candidate like Joe Biden, who has been in Washington for over 40 years – probably not…

What should be noted is that early major Clinton endorsements also seem to be coming from the left, according to University of Stanford professor Simon Jackman‘s ideal point estimates. Of the 21 senators who have endorsed Clinton, 13 are to the left of the median Democratic senator, and only eight are to the right. The book “The Party Decides” tells us that this group holds a large sway over who gets the nomination, because they tend to represent the various interest groups within the party. Therefore, this hints at a potential challenger having more room for support on the right than the left.

***

In the 2008 battle with Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton won Latinos and the white working class overwhelmingly. She lost black voters overwhelmingly and liberal whites by a good margin. She split the unions and the Robert Rubin Democrats. Importantly, her coalition was probably large enough to win, had she run a better campaign. Obama’s victory among pledged delegates was a scant 127 out of a total of 3,424. His entire margin of victory rested upon his superior organization of low-turnout caucus states like Idaho and Maine, where Clinton’s potential coalition was probably stronger. So, assuming that Team Clinton learns the rules of its own party this time around, a would-be challenger will actually have to build a bigger coalition than Obama’s…

In the end, Clinton’s greatest advantage might be the continued political weakness of Obama. History is not on the side of the Democrats as they try to win the White House for a third consecutive term. A party has only done so once in the postwar era—in 1988, when Ronald Reagan’s job approval was in the mid-50s by Election Day. Currently, Obama’s is mired in the mid-40s. Yet Clinton has a personal reputation that might transcend Obama’s unpopularity, and she polls extremely well at the moment. So long as that continues, risk-averse Democrats of all demographic stripes might be inclined to put aside their internecine battle to prevent a Republican victory, something they all equally oppose.

***

There is tremendous momentum swirling around Mrs. Clinton that will begin to gather steam as soon as she announces her candidacy. A Hillary win would seem like a glorious victory for feminism, one of the 20th century’s greatest social movements. Remember how much difficulty 2008 GOP nominee John McCain had running against a freshman senator with a thin résumé who managed to position himself as the triumphant final act of the Civil Rights movement…

Furthermore, do not underestimate how many millions of Independent and even Republican baby-boomer women who helped sow the seeds of the feminist movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s will be cheering her on.

How does the male Republican presidential candidate maneuver around this movement? By persuading voters that an issue or personality flaw in the movement’s leader is more important than the triumph of the movement.

In the case of Hillary Clinton, that issue and personality flaw is “trust.”

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I never learned to write in cursive at all. I moved schools at age 8 and countries at age 9 and missed writing altogether. I just started joining the printed letters on my own. In grade 6 in Canada, I had to write something on the blackboard and I had never mastered “s”. So my teacher sternly said “how do you write an ‘s'” and I said “like this”. She was not happy … lol … I hadn’t figured out the generic ‘you’ by that age either.

My take: Why Graduating West Point Cadets Gave Obama the Cold Shoulder

kingsjester on May 29, 2014 at 6:51 AM

Gee, you go through the four grueling years of West Point only to be told by your Commander-in-Chief that the military is not on the front lines of foreign affairs anymore and that instead of being warriors (like those who have come before) you will be guarding the water supply because of global warming. What’s not to love about that?

The speech was highly offensive in that it was not about the new officers and their accomplishments, it was a defense of the last five years of Obama’s half-assed approach to foreign affairs and national security. It was a lesson from the schoolmarm-in-chief about just how damned smart he has been. There were more strawmen in that speech than you can find at a Halloween hayride.

And lets not forget that one in three of those soldiers killed in Afghanistan happened on Obama’s watch.

Bottom line, the graduates at University of Texas got a far more inspirational speech from a real warrior than the cadets of West Point got from the lazy stupid shiftless bastard whose orders they had just sworn to obey. Too bad the students and faculty of West Point didn’t take a lesson from their liberal brethren at Rutgers and hold a sit-in until somebody other than Obama was the graduation speaker! ;0

I am calling on Congress to support a new Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund of up to $5 billion, which will allow us to train, build capacity, and facilitate partner countries on the front lines.
– President Barack Hussein Obama, 5/28/14, West Point Military Academy

I love this concept. The rat-eared wonder is essentially asking Congress to give him $5B that he can spread around the Muslim world as he sees fit. No oversight. No accountability. Congress would be foolish to give him such a blank check instead of forcing the lazy stupid bastard to have and spell out just what he wanted to fund instance-by-instance.

We have serious problems right now, not the least of which is that turns out 1700 vets were not even on the official wait list at the Phoenix VA facility. That’s just one facility in the VA system. Libya is imploding to the point where Americans are being told to get out. Too many Americans are still jobless and the economy still sucks.

So what is going on at the White House this week? Mooch held a conference to rant about those evil Republicans trying to de-rail here unrealistic school lunch standards. The rat-eared wonder hosted a science fair where he had a temper tantrum when a reporter dared ask a legitimate question about Syria. And today, the bastard is going to hold a summit on head injuries in youth sports programs.

Where is the serious stuff that the administration is supposed to be doing? I wouldn’t be surprised if the filthy bastard dropped in on the finals at the National Spelling Bee tonight just to round out a decidedly unserious schedule of events.

what??.. no sparky??… what happened??.. any link??
I really hope he listens to you ms J..
and that cooler heads will sus this out favorably …
who will make us laugh…??.. hourly, daily, weekly ??…
who will we talk wood with…
who will nip Bmores wood stash when he’s not looking??
HA is loosing its very best commentators…what gives??